


respect

by pixiepower



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Ambiguous Background Relationships, Healing, M/M, Mentorship, Mild Hurt/Comfort, One-Sided Rivalry, Swordfighting, Training, lee chan is hot, this fic is nigh impossible to tag except for one unerring fact:
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-15 17:15:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29936748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pixiepower/pseuds/pixiepower
Summary: Chan spins his sword in a delicate arc, grip tight and wrist loose. He’s showboating, reminding Minghao where his eyes are.He doesn’t need the reminder; Minghao knows. Chan’s got three blades when he looks at him like that.
Relationships: Lee Chan | Dino/Xu Ming Hao | The8
Comments: 6
Kudos: 39





	respect

**Author's Note:**

> title is not... NOT from “respect” by bts. you know?
> 
>  **note:** the setting of this fic involves monster slaying and training to do so, and as such involves some description of weapons, blood, and injuries. if you need additional warnings please do not hesitate to reach out!

_“Lee Chan.”_

It’s whispered before it’s spoken. Seokmin starts telling stories to the conscripts. A folk tale, the legend of a small-town boy who learns late in his youth that his parents were legendary fighters. In one story, he has to be coaxed away from his village because without him they would be defenseless. In another, he leaves after being unable to protect his hometown from a terrible beast, returning from slaying one threat only to find them succumbed to another. In all of them, he is young, and beautiful, and strong.

Minghao listens, because he listens when Seokmin speaks, and notices day by day that Seokmin’s tales start to fuzz at the edges. He’s being careful, rubbing a thumb around the charcoal to smudge the likeness into something more vague, until it could be anyone.

Minghao doesn’t understand why he doesn’t say the name anymore, why it changes with each retelling. He doesn’t understand why, because Seokmin doesn’t make choices lightly.

He doesn’t understand why until he is stood on the sparring grounds, feet bare on the morning-cool stone, eye to eye with a man with eyes like a boy.

“Lee Chan,” he hears for the first time in months, not from this young man’s wide, serious mouth, but from Seungcheol’s.

“Seo Myeongho,” he replies courteously. Chan tilts his head, turning his face a handful of degrees toward his shoulder, and Minghao meets it with a raised eyebrow, correcting for the first time, “Xu Minghao.”

Chan says _Minghao_ with clarity and purpose, mouths it silently, once, to get the taste of it right, then nods curtly, pronouncing, “Minghao” with ease, and then a followed, “hyeong,” like they’re synonyms.

Minghao can feel his eyes narrow a hair’s width when his gaze meets Chan’s. It’s fair enough, the familiarity. He accepts it for what it is.

He knows what this is, anyway. Seungcheol doesn’t have to explain it. It’s probably why he didn’t bother.

Several months ago Minghao watched Hansol get taken in, then watched him become Jihoon’s shadow as autumn turned to winter. Jihoon’s long-limbed movements stretched on a different frame, Hansol had adopted the styles into something all his own, with fingerprints so overlapping it’s impossible to tell who touched what. They move, together and apart, with the same careful understanding and ability to surprise. The system works.

The difference is that Hansol conscripted and selected Jihoon. With eyes like glass Hansol looked at Jihoon’s steady feet and beautiful hands and perfectly compact form and chose words like _honor_ and _please_ to fold under his wing. Chan looks like he was ready to take off the second he shed the shell, down still wet and everything.

Minghao has to hand it to Seungcheol. It’s a perfect match.

The twitch at the corner of Chan’s jaw when Seungcheol quietly says, “Take care of him,” like it’s a kindness, does not go unnoticed by Minghao. 

It’s that one clench of muscle, the tightening of posture, the way Minghao can nearly feel in his own teeth the grind of Chan’s, that makes him agree before he can even decide to. Chan eyes Minghao with feigned disinterest. Minghao lets himself smile, and watches Chan’s expression shift.

•

Chan isn’t stupid enough to wish for a war, but sometimes his fingers twitch like he’s fighting one.

They sit with their feet sunken into silt, ankle-deep in the fountain the way Soonyoung taught them, _they don’t want you doing this_ with his mouth pursed plush and his clothes hiked up to his knees.

Sometimes Minghao wonders if Soonyoung would have worked. If Chan smiles freely with him because he gets the choice, or because they are simply better matched. When they are together it’s a cacophony of sound, a cat leaping into a flock of birds and sending feathers fluttering in every direction.

Chan and Minghao enjoy their meals in silence. Chan has a pile of bowls at his side, a small tree of them dripping water onto the ground while Minghao finishes his meal. 

He sips at his soup. It’s long lukewarm, and if he closes his eyes he can imagine opening his mouth and letting the fountain pour into it instead of the watery _guk,_ abundance unearned. The last mouthful goes down easy, and he opens his eyes. The fountain might be gilded but the water that runs through it is the same as the river.

In Minghao’s periphery Chan is staring daggers into the eyes of the statue at the other end of the fountain, the muscles in his face moving like those deep stages of sleep where your body is following the dance steps in your mind.

Chan does it in his sleep, too. His body is never still. His thin sheets end up bunched at his ankles, the sway of his back exposed as he twitches through dream after dream. Minghao loses his own just watching Chan move, moonlight holding him at every inch. It shifts with him as his fists clench and unclench at his chest, spills over the narrow point of his waist where his underclothes ruck up, where he has old, faded scars crisscrossing his middle like the laces of a dress. He wears light like armor. Untouchable.

When Chan wakes he always rubs at his jaw, digging the meat of his palm into his cheek like the unshaven patches are the only separation between the bone and relief.

Minghao pours half his breakfast into Chan’s bowl before he leaves it at the foot of his bedspace. By the time Chan has rolled up his linens and washed his face Minghao is already tipping his own porridge back, neck outstretched.

•

Chan’s jaw is set tight, the close crop of his hair on the sides exposing the line of his neck, and Minghao is focused singularly on it.

The eye is drawn to points of weakness.

When Chan swallows, his throat bobs, and Minghao rotates the hilt of his sword in his hand with one thumb. Call and response.

Chan spins his sword in a delicate arc, grip tight and wrist loose. He’s showboating, reminding Minghao where his eyes are. 

He doesn’t need the reminder; Minghao knows. Chan’s got three blades when he looks at him like that.

Minghao lunges before Chan’s twirl hits thirty degrees, but is already jabbing at air by the time he reaches his body. Chan sways out of reach, sword knocking at Minghao’s. A touch, a tag. It’s playful despite the daggers in Chan’s eyes, despite the way he’s sucking his teeth when he swings for Minghao and it rings with steel against steel.

They didn’t trouble themselves with pads. They don’t anymore unless they have an audience, the weight of them dragging down their movements. Chan was the one to forgo them first, wouldn’t even patch up the nicks on his arms or soothe the bruises and split skin on his knuckles. Always the hiss when his skin hit the baths, swallowed back before Minghao could make them out.

Minghao knows everything about Chan by now.

He knows how he moves, he knows how he steps. It’s his responsibility to know. To be aware of his opponent to the point of hyperawareness, to know him better than anyone else. To know what he’s going to do before he does it.

Chan ducks under the quick slice of Minghao’s blade, low on his knees and back up, his sword meeting Minghao’s on the rebound. He moves like the river, no sign of stopping, just one motion into the next like water churning white against rocks. Each sequence of steps is his body slipping through silt, filling in spaces with heavy breaths and sweaty skin and changing direction as quickly as the current.

But Minghao is patient, he is careful, his discipline and his experience informing every combination. He moves like clouds floating across the sky, deceptively gentle. Thunder rolls in the distance.

It’s all water at the end of the day, isn’t it?

Minghao sidesteps Chan’s next jab, hones the side of his sword along the length of Chan’s blade with a sharp noise, then knocks his knuckles against Chan’s hand. Chan’s grip falters, and it takes one more swing before Chan’s sword is out of his grip and in Minghao’s hand.

Chan swallows his swear this time, turns his back when Minghao says, “Good,” so that Minghao can’t see his expression. His hand is already outstretched when Minghao tosses his sword back to him, and his fingers close around the hilt with perfect proportion, a limb reinstated.

“Good,” Chan repeats. His eyes are like fire when he meets Minghao’s gaze. _Good_ is not good enough.

“Yes.” 

Minghao sheaths his sword. The finality of the action means more than the spring sun dipping low in the sky. They have outlasted the sun many times over, besides.

Chan is haloed in oranges and pinks as he turns his own sword over in both hands. Minghao sees his hands, small and well-balanced in perfect proportion to his weapon, trace over the engraving at the hilt, his thumbnail cutting a straight line along the flat of the blade. 

His shadow is cast in warm rose, too, long as it is on the stone floor. It stretches. This way, the top of Chan’s head touches Minghao’s feet.

Chan sheaths his sword and tucks it into his waistband. His shadow looks the picture of a hero.

•

The moon is full, and Chan is running again.

He’s taken to sleeping at one end of the roll, as far from Minghao as possible, sheets tucked around his waist like an arm slung over his body with his chest and legs free. Moonlight pours into the sleeping space. His whole body strains against the linens like he’s trying to break free of captivity, fingers digging into the bedroll.

Chan wakes with a shout, and Minghao tugs him by the back of the shirt into his chest, one hand clamping over his mouth. Chan is still fighting whatever demon was chasing him in his sleep, limbs flailing until Minghao murmurs into his ear, “You’ll wake the whole company.”

The admonishment drips down Chan’s back, and from this close Minghao doesn’t miss how he shivers where he would usually stiffen, how the freezing cold bottoms of his feet arch to press against the fronts of Minghao’s shins. His whole body is sweating, and Minghao runs cold, but Chan feels like the blue tinder in the middle of a fire.

Chan shakes, like even the innermost part of him can’t stop running.

Minghao’s fingertips are gentle on the soft curve of Chan’s cheek, the seal of his palm over his mouth a strong vacuum. Chan, like always, surprises Minghao, then. He burrows backward, shoulders strong against the flat of Minghao’s chest. Like this he feels so strong. Like this he feels so small.

After a few minutes, the rhythm of Chan’s heaving chest starts smoothing out. Minghao goes to move his hand off Chan’s face, but realizes suddenly that moisture has dripped between his fingers, sliding down the side of his thumb. That Chan has been crying.

“In my hometown they tell a story,” Minghao starts quietly, nose brushing the short hair above Chan’s ear. “Of a village whose banks ran dry, whose rice fields withered, whose livestock died. A boy asked the heavens what he could do to save his village, and they replied, _‘Look to the sky. All you need is there.’_ He gazed up at the sky and saw the moon, beaming bright, and determined to go there, so that he could gather moonwater from its craters and bring his village back to life.”

Chan’s hand wraps around Minghao’s wrist, and Minghao moves it down off Chan’s face to press against Chan’s sternum. Chan encircles Minghao’s thin wrist with both hands, a cuff. His breath is warm on Minghao’s knuckles.

Minghao continues, “He spent days and days weaving a rope long enough to reach the moon and pull himself up. His fellow villagers asked if they could help, offering what little they had to him, but he was determined not to put them through any more hardship. He used the silk from his clothes, the fibers from his bed, ignoring anything and anyone else as he worked, and finally he managed to lasso it. He landed upon the moon, legs wobbling from thin air and found the moon dry. He looked around himself, at his empty cupped hands, and said, _‘I never noticed the stars for the moon.’”_

Chan laughs weakly. His lips brush the back of Minghao’s hand.

“You all tell a lot of stories here,” Chan whispers, almost too quiet to be heard.

Minghao waits. Lets Chan speak against his skin.

“Have you heard the one about the hero who lost his village to one monster while slaying another?” Chan says the word _hero_ like an expletive, like the taste of it between his teeth is too bitter to stand.

“We’ve told that one.” Minghao slowly lets his legs come up to nest behind Chan’s. Chan does not move away. Instead his fire settles, a warmth kept simmering in the cradle of Minghao’s body. “We tell a lot of stories here because they’re something to learn from. Many of the conscripts have never seen a monster, much less sunk swords between their eyes.”

The sound of Chan’s heartbeat is deafening. Perhaps that’s his own.

“To slay something bigger than yourself takes more than one battle,” Minghao murmurs. “Sometimes it takes a war.”

Chan nods but says nothing more. 

From here, moonlight pours over their joined hands. The rest of Chan is shrouded in shadow when Minghao pulls the sheet up over their legs.

•

The longer they train, the less Minghao thinks of himself in the singular, which is odd.

Hansol spends his time with Joshua, with Seungkwan, alone with the livestock, and Jihoon disappears for days at a time, yet when they take their stance on the sparring grounds they move like two halves of a whole. They return after a long trip, both heads of the serpent strung up on their gear, and they look at each other with quiet pride, as shining as the fangs at one end of their trophies, as visible as the deep-stained scales at the other.

Minghao and Chan are less two sides of a scale, more tied like a horse and cart. Where Minghao goes, so too does Chan. 

“Hyeong,” Chan says. He’s walking with quicker steps than Minghao, and has to turn back to look Minghao in the eye. Cart before the horse. “I heard you slayed a fiend on your own before you conscripted here.”

Minghao lengthens his stride to fall into step with Chan. “Where did you hear that?”

Chan’s mouth pulls up on the side, half to a smile, and Minghao watches the corners of his eyes taper with it. He feels a little caught out. “Did you keep a trophy?” Chan asks, casual-sweet.

“If someone encountered a peril like that, I would think it a bad idea to keep any part of it.”

Humming in acknowledgement, Chan lets them walk in silence, until: “Not even a fang?”

Minghao’s stomach clenches. He can still feel the hot, sticky drool of the _taotie_ on his skin when the weather gets too humid, sees its jowls dripping with it when sap runs thick down a tree. It took water scalding with steam to make him feel clean again, skin red and raw, washed as free as possible of the gluttony and repulsion.

They had asked for a trophy. Minghao had obliged; a mouthful of fangs in a silk pouch his mother had embroidered. He dreams of the mountains in her careful stitchwork, the beads sparkling stars.

Minghao had forgotten that as he knows Chan, Chan too knows him.

“If you already know, why do you ask?” _Brat,_ he doesn’t say.

Chan hums again, this time half to a tune. It’s melodic. It almost sounds familiar. “To see what you offer me and what you keep.”

Sometimes Chan looks at Minghao with frightening clarity, an intimacy Minghao has never known. At first it seemed wary, a begrudging agreement to learn what he can from Minghao despite his homegrown ferocity, despite his obvious resistance to the idea that anyone might think of him _in association_ with anyone else. A lone hero. Now it seems like something else.

Sometimes Minghao looks at Chan and feels the raw greed enveloping him again, thick between his fingers like honey. It feels just as dangerous as when he slid his sword across the _taotie’s_ neck.

Especially when he gets the feeling he’s being watched back.

•

Midsummer, Chan spars with Hansol.

Minghao watches over Jihoon’s shoulder, the two of them in amicable silence, comfortable as they always are, and rests one arm over his shoulders.

Hansol fights with weight and power and surprising agility, moving with Chan like a routine they’ve spent hours rehearsing. Chan flows like a leaf riding the stream, buoyant and almost playful. They use the lightweight swords, blunted from disuse, and their faces seem a split second from breaking into smiles like eggs cracked into bowls. A hairline fracture in the shimmer of their eyes, the way Hansol’s tongue is caught between his teeth, the quick little breaths Chan lets out only through his nose. Friendship rings with each clash of metal.

“It’s weird, isn’t it?”

Jihoon grunts instead of answering. Grunts as an answer. His fingers tap a rhythm onto the railing of the fence as his eyes follow the dance on the sparring grounds some distance away.

“Seeing him,” _with someone else._

Jihoon shrugs slightly, not enough to buck Minghao’s arm off. “He comes back.”

He says it simply, the _always_ unspoken but no less present. Jihoon has trust dripping from his body like sweat. Every decision he makes seems simultaneously effortless and well-considered, every word heavy with light.

“He moves like he’s part of you,” Jihoon says offhandedly.

At the comment Minghao feels heat radiate from his body, turning his vision waverly where he can’t tear his eyes from Chan, flickering around Hansol like droplets of water sizzling on a hot pan. Chan with Hansol looks unburdened, carefree. He closes his eyes, like he doesn’t need to focus, like it matters but doesn’t weigh on him.

“Hansol—”

“Hansol moves like he learned from me,” interrupts Jihoon. Corrects Jihoon. “Chan moves like your blood runs through his body.”

Unbidden, an image of Chan’s mouth latched to Minghao’s neck, his wrist, fangs sunken into Minghao’s body, tongue red-wet, eyes sharp and bright on him. No fiend, but greed, greed, greed.

Minghao has heard legends of heroes who became preoccupied with defeating a monster. Whose days and nights were filled with only their goal, eyes burning with singleminded vigor, all their efforts put toward pursuing their demon. A rivalry flirting with the edge of something dangerous, on the verge of obsession, when all one’s energy is spent on someone even when they are not there.

Chan and Minghao know all the best and worst parts of one another, move like one soul in two bodies. When Chan’s sword knocks against Minghao’s and he laughs, the feeling lingers in his stomach for hours like a bellyful of stew. When Minghao looks at Chan, Chan is already looking back.

Chan is no monster.

What does that make Minghao?

•

There is a creature in a village, and Minghao quietly tells Seungcheol to send Joshua and Seungkwan instead.

Chan wakes with the sun, and when Seungkwan and Joshua return midmorning they have a tail between them and blue-black blood shining up their limbs like boots and gloves. Minghao watches them ride in, and Chan stiffens next to him. 

When Minghao turns, Chan is halfway to the sparring grounds. The strides he takes to get there aren’t leisurely, but he arrives in his own time to Chan in the center of the floor, bare feet shoulder width apart and eyes boring into Minghao’s face, jaw tight as a reel.

“Am I not good enough, hyeong?” Chan spits. “Am I not strong enough?”

_What is the point if none of it is real? If I do not get the chance to redeem myself?_

It burns in Chan’s eyes. He draws his sword, and Minghao draws his once his body clears the railing.

Chan hardly lets Minghao’s feet hit the stone before he’s lunging forward, blade held close to his body until he’s right under Minghao’s wing. Minghao barely dodges it; Chan’s sword clips off the fence with a high ringing noise. He is moving faster than Minghao has ever seen, like each point his body touches the ground is a hand on hot iron. Steam rises. He’s weightless.

Chan is giving it his all.

Finally.

This is what he can do. He is not thinking about his failures. He is not thinking that Minghao pulls punches or pulls away because he thinks Chan is not strong enough to keep up with him. He is just moving on instinct.

Minghao’s steel clashes against Chan’s. Minghao wants him to succeed. Wants him to fly past his potential. Wants him to win.

Wants him.

Minghao’s foot gives on the backswing, and his next move misses by a mile. Chan is wildly out of reach, until he isn’t.

Three sensations hit Minghao’s chest at once.

The first, the tip of a sword, catching in the linen. The second, the press of knuckles to his sternum.

The third, the wind knocked out of him from the inside out, a lit match dropped in a barrel of gunpowder. Explosive.

Wrapped around Chan’s fist are the cords of Minghao’s shirt, pulled tight into his determined grip as he yanks Minghao down the few centimeters to look into his eyes. Breath fans over Minghao’s face, short and hot over his parted lips. The look in Chan’s eyes is like fire, like forged steel, more cutting than his blade.

“Look at me,” Chan says, low and insistent. Heated.

Minghao lets a quick rush of air out of his nose, watching rivulets of sweat roll down Chan’s temples in his periphery. All he can see is Chan. 

He can’t possibly say _I always am._

“Look at me!” Chan growls, and Minghao’s sword clatters to the ground. “I’m better than you. Say it. Just—just fucking say _something,_ Myeongho.”

Minghao drops to his knees.

The point of Chan’s sword slides up and up, feather-light like lips dragging up Minghao’s chest, sternum, throat, leaving a buttercup kiss below his chin as the steel tips his face upward. The sun is blazing behind Chan, his silhouette strong where it’s haloed in blinding light. Not a hero. A young god, eyes burning with passion into Minghao’s.

“Don’t—” Chan falters, for the first time.

“I yield,” Minghao breathes, knees falling apart wider. “I yield.”

Chan’s lips part. His hand trembles on the hilt of his sword. “You—”

“I yield,” Minghao repeats.

 _I yield,_ and Chan’s knuckles go white. _I yield,_ and his sword rings against Minghao’s on the floor, steel scraping along the stone, the angle just acute of kicking up sparks. _I yield,_ and Chan is diving onto Minghao’s body, knee to his stomach, arm reeled back to hit him.

Minghao’s arms go up to shield his face, and the wind is knocked out of him when Chan’s fist connects with his jaw. His back hits the floor, and Chan’s hand goes to his hair, fingers gripping Minghao’s scalp. Minghao writhes and throws elbows to protect himself, barely able to gasp for breath, wincing at the telltale hiss when his swing connects with Chan’s ribs.

Chan fights like it’s for his life, eyes bright and fists closed. Fights like he’s finally done trying to impress Minghao, showing him everything, letting himself go, and Minghao knows that finally _Chan_ knows he can do more. Minghao wants Chan to go beyond him, to look beyond him, to be someone Chan holds as an equal instead of a goal. 

Capable. Chan can do better if he’s not chasing after the idea that he wants to reach where Minghao is. If he forgives himself.

Because Chan _is_ better.

Chan’s hand pulls Minghao’s head back by the hair, exposing his neck. “You yield,” he pants, knees to either side of Minghao’s waist.

Minghao’s chest is heaving, the soft muscle of Chan’s thighs flexed against his sides, and his face aches with scrapes and incandescent joy.

“You yield?” Chan whispers, ragged breaths through his teeth. There’s a smear of pink down his jaw, sweat coating his neck, blood at the corner of his mouth. “What are you smiling at?”

If they’re on the same footing, they can have this other thing they’ve been dancing around. Greed drips down the back of Minghao’s throat, between his fingers. It’s in Chan’s hair.

Minghao laughs, and before he knows it it’s swallowed by Chan’s bruising kiss, his small hand at the back of Minghao’s head tugging him up into Chan’s body, chest to chest and mouth to mouth. It’s rough at first, unaligned, teeth bared like Chan is trying to fang Minghao from the inside out, but Chan pulls back and swears before diving in again, and this one is perfect.

It softens immediately, like mercy. The curves of Chan’s cheeks are soft, his hair is stiff at the tips with moisture but otherwise soft and fine, his hands are soft and small and precise and his mouth—

It tastes like forgiveness, like a beast spared.

It’s the mental match that Minghao can’t duck free of; his mind is conditioned to expect the next step from Chan, to know him like the feel of his sword in his palm, which is why it lands like a hit when Chan murmurs sweetly, “Gonna fuck you on the sparring grounds someday. They’ll watch you yield then.”

The wind rushing out of Minghao’s lungs is strangled, no elbow in his trachea, all air evacuating his body and leaving him squirming below Chan, who finally, _finally_ laughs, too.

“Point,” he says gleefully, and licks his lips. His tongue comes away blush and wine, the back of his hand when he wipes at his mouth no better.

Minghao lets his head fall back against the floor with a sickening sound, and laughs too. “You’ll come back with a trophy and a dog,” he says breathlessly.

“A dog?” Chan asks. The sun hits his hair like liquid gold, pours over his body, and lights Minghao up.

“They always make their way back to the rubble.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!
> 
> find me on [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/pixiepowerao3) and [curiouscat](http://www.curiouscat.me/pixiepower/)!


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